One of our aims to give a voice to the students of the University. We are here with Travis Mazer, the current President of the UM Libertarians. Travis is a neuroscience undergraduate student who will be representing the case against affirmative action. We will keep the topic focused on affirmative action as a philosophical and moral issue.
That’s an interesting question. Libertarians are a very diverse group of people. They have wide-ranging views and moral ideas, however the one thing that typically unites all libertarians is the non-aggression principle. The most important of libertarian virtue, philosophy, and morality is whether or not someone is harmed by an action. And by harm, we mean through the initiation of force, so someone punching you for saying Skrillex is good music is an initiation of force that is unjustified (despite how bad Skrillex is :) ), but defending yourself is a response to that force and is therefore acceptable. That can be described in terms of rights or in social good, but generally we are concerned with institutions we have or could potentially have in relationship to harm and the individual.
What virtues and values the University of Michigan could stand to pay more attention to? As a libertarian, what are your goals?
We could focus more on that notion of harm. A lot of emphasis is needed in that area. For instance, UofM has been seen infringing on freedom of speech. The organization FIRE is a legal organization that primarily focuses on this issue and has seen several cases on speech controls on UofM campus within the student code. The fact that there are rules on what is suitable speech and fines for “unacceptable speech” is archaic for an institution that supposedly prides itself on intellectual diversity and openness. These fines and restrictions are a form of harm as the University initiates force on individuals in the form of fines in response to students’ free expression.
Tell us about your opinion on the moral consideration of implementing affirmative action policies. Why or why not is, in terms of ethics and morality, affirmative action a good thing for higher education?
Whether or not affirmative action is acceptable really does depend on who is conducting the action. For instance, many private schools such as Harvard practices affirmative action and libertarians would be fully comfortable with that sort of behavior. They are a private institution that has the right to affiliate with people that it wants to affiliate with and run its business the way it wishes. However, if we look into issues such as public institutions and institutions that are responsible to citizens of the US – it’s really an issue of whether or not discriminatory policies are being used. In some cases of affirmative action with the UM, such as the Jennifer Gratz case in the early 2000’s, the UM used discriminatory practices and in that regard we would not be comfortable utilizing it. It is a clear violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause and is therefore in conflict with the rights of citizens funding and seeking access to a public institution.
John Stuart Mill says that the right thing to do is the action that promotes the greatest utility and the absence of disutility. Many argue that affirmative action is just because it alleviates the injustices of the past that have resulted in the suffering minorities today. Others argue that public universities should be made to better reflect the racial demographics of the country or of the community. Do you agree or disagree, and can you justify why this is just or unjust?
According to recent research on affirmative action acceptances, students accepted through this mechanism end up much more likely to drop out of college than their peers, so all you get for your good intent of improving these people’s lives is saddling them with college debt for an unfinished degree. But whether or not affirmative action is a good idea isn’t as relevant to this question seeing as it is a policy that’s attempting to create a demographic ratio from a highly selected group of students. The K-12 education system is already causing trouble for a large number of students and looking into graduation rates and grade point averages, the K-12 system especially fails for those who are susceptible and less privileged. Affirmative Action at the University level is, in my opinion, too late. If you truly want to have a better distribution of demographics, a better area would be improving the K-12 education system so that those demographics are better situated.
So why is that? Do you propose that we better equip students in the K-12 system?
I believe that they need to improve in that the sense that they better cater to those students who are less privileged seeing as those are the ones who receive the most disutility from the system. I also think that students should have choices in their education, so escapes from the failed system we have today should be readily available and not as heavily discouraged as they are today.
A New York Times writer who teaches Immanuel Kant (a philosopher who is famous for the basic idea of ‘the ends do not justify the means’) at the University of Michigan argues in that Kant would have been against affirmative action. He writes that the debate of affirmative action it is a matter of “legislating in response to perceived social needs” vs “legislating with an eye to first principles (aka what action is the right thing to do)”. Do we judge policies as being more or less likely to have the consequences we seek in the present, or do we judge policies as being more or less compatible with first principles that know no time but are always applicable? Do we ask, will it work? Or do we ask, is it right? What do you think?
We can look at it in both ways. We can, one, look at it from a Kantian perspective and think whether or not it would be acceptable to have discriminatory policies in every situation and we can also look at it from a utilitarian perspective and think well we can see that universities that are able to have a distribution of students that reflected the demographics of their community as a whole without Affirmative Action policies, such as top 10% acceptance systems. And so we can see in both perspectives that there are arguments against the implementation against Affirmative Action that can still lead to the desired result of Affirmative Action.
The college libertarians once hosted Jennifer Gratz as a speaker at the University. Did you attend this? What are your thoughts on the issues and response to the criticisms of her case?
What I see this case as is difficulties with free speech that UM has. The case reflects how the UM can have difficulties with respecting different points of view, especially with ones that may be completely in contradiction to what the UM holds in the case of Jennifer Gratz.
Where does harm play a role in this case?
I see harm playing a role in that students being told that the funding they have to give will be used fairly and then not being used fairly, its basically a violation between a contract between the university and the students
To clarify, my question is about Jennifer Gratz’s case itself.
In that case, because UM is an institution that is supposed to be responsible to the citizens of the United States through the equal protection clause of the constitution it does not have the right to discriminate between citizens of the United States based on race, or ethnicity or other factors. It’s an important distinction to make with public institution and with institutions that are responsible to the citizens of the United States. The reason why Jennifer Gratz sued the UM was because it was found that the UM was using discriminatory policies based on race and ethnicity which was in clear contradiction to the UM’s own claims of fair and non-discriminatory policies of admission as well as the Constitution. She was applying to LSA and she was not admitted. However it was not necessarily her specific case that was the importance of the lawsuit. The importance of the lawsuit was the discovery of the UM admissions committee using race as a admissions factor. The UM was using a point system based on a certain characteristic such as high GPA and test scores. If you scored higher than a certain threshold of point value, you are granted admission. The problem is that UM in that time was using race and ethnicity as an additional point value for some demographics and not for others, which is inherently discriminatory and against their policies.
Why, do you believe, can that not apply to higher education? Why not use the past as a reason
for why we implement UM Affirmative Action?
Because it is a violation of the rights of American citizens. If AA is desired, a constitutional amendment must be made that removes equal protection before the law. Additionally, the difference there is that using AA at a UM level only heightens the issue of disparity. For instance, you’re still selecting from a smaller pool from a larger pool of persons who are typically underprivileged. What you see is not the distribution that you want. The demographics would still be skewed toward those who are more privileged in the underprivileged group. You still have that issue those who are underprivileged but still deserving of a higher education are still being blocked out of the U they deserve because of the failures of the K-12 system. Affirmative Action would not make sense as a solution for the K-12 system because those citizens are already required by law to attend those schools so it would be reallocation of resources and a heightened emphasis on students who are falling behind and are lost as a result of the system – treating the underprivileged worse than they deserve to be.
Tell us more on political reimbursement of events, how does that work?
The main rule of the UM funding program is that no events that have a political slant (either left, right or any other direction) or religious are not allowed to be funded. If the UM followed this policy fairly, all political events including the JGRATz event and BAMN protests, should not be funded. The fact that some were and some weren’t on a pick-and-choose basis is unfair and deserving of correction.
Can you tell us on the details and justification of the lawsuit by the UM College Libertarians against UM? What motivated the lawsuit? What is your opinion on this case?
Cody Chipman and Derek Magill are the two leading proponents of leading that lawsuit. Their motivation for pursuing this is that in attempt to receive funding for Jennifer Gratz to come and speak regarding AA earlier this school year – the issue was not that the Libertarian club failed to receive funding. That was something we were accepting of. The issue was that the motivation for rejecting our request was that our event was political and the same group that rejected our request on the basis of political bias proceeded to give funding for another group known as BAMN. Funding for transportation and lodging to Washington DC in order to support their protesting of the Affirmative Action case being heard at the Supreme Court. This clear and distinct example of political bias and discrimination in funding is something that was unfair and in clear violation of UM’s own policies on reimbursement of political events.
Finally, what are your thoughts on the issue concerning diversity at the University of
Michigan? What should the University of Michigan do about it if not the current AA policy
that it is pushing right now?
I believe that diversity is a highly important aspect of an intellectual community. Diversity is important to stimulating discussion and bringing in new ideas that may not other wise be implement. I believe that the UM could look to the top 10% method mimic its actions in making the demographics of the community
In what ways?
They do not have to use race as a discriminatory factor in apps merely shows that there are ways of expanding diversity without racial discrimination. They are not necessarily more diverse, they just better reflect their community as of right now.
What should we as individual students do about issues facing diversity?
One of the most important things we should do is be more accepting and tolerant of all communities. One of the issues we may see at a nation scale is this notion of mistrust of smaller groups. The country has been improving in this regard, as well as the rest of the world, it is still an issue with homosexual couples who want to marry. The US has tipped finally in that the majority agree that homosexuals should be allowed to marry which is a sign of progress. However that is a very slight majority (about 51-53%). What we as individual students about that is focus on being more open-minded with cultures different than our own and to be more accepting of practices and ideas that we may or may not agree with.
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| Travis Mazer is a 4th-year undergraduate student studying neuroscience at the University of Michigan. He is the current President of the University of Michigan College Libertarians. |
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